Today was. . .

chock full of fetuses.

Which is to be expected from my obstetrics/gynecology rotation, I suppose.

We are currently 30 students rotating in two gynecology wards, two high-risk pregnancy wards, post-delivery care, multiple outpatient clinics, one emergency room, surgical day care, and labor and delivery. Each of those venues can accommodate between one and six students on a given day. We are paired with different students every day. We are also each on-call in labor and delivery or the women's ER 3-5 nights during the rotation. Our schedule approaches the complexity of most moderately sized military operation.

Today I accidentally ended up in the outpatient OR dedicated to abortions when I was scheduled to be in the gynecology ward. This led to a different kind of day than I had first anticipated.

Israel has relatively liberal abortion policies and extensive prenatal screening programs so this OR is a busy one. To be honest, I don't find it all that upsetting. Well, that's not true. I find all surgery vaguely upsetting and violent and unnatural. Especially the ones where we take internal organs out and throw them away and/or place foreign objects, such as giant plastic intestine snaps, in. I appreciate the results, ie survival, but something about it feels so wrong to me. And I didn't go through all of our clinical days, communication skills afternoons, and empathetic body language role-play weekends to poke sleeping people all day.

Moral of the story, I don't find the abortions disturbing. But it was a downer of a day anyway. Our population here is largely Bedouin, and the entire focus of their culture is children. And they're very quiet and stoic. But you can feel the desperation for a healthy pregnancy. There was a women there today, exactly my age, with six children. (What have I been doing with my life?!) This was her first pregnancy loss. She wasn't visibly upset, but right before the procedure she looked so scared, and my Arabic isn't remotely good enough to say anything comforting. Meh, it was one of those days.

I obsessively watch Scrubs to cheer myself up. I vaguely consider this time educational. Sadly, like all medical students, I tend towards the obsessive and refuse to just watch my favorite episodes. I have to watch them in order. From season 1 episode 1. This means sitting through the annoying "extra special" Scrubs(es?) where they get all serious for no justifiable reason.

So that's today. Tomorrow promises a long night of vaginal bleeding in the women's ER. Till then. . .